He said it was imperative for the opposition parties, which include Parti Warisan Sabah, to give support to the Gabungan Sabah alliance, of which SAPP is a component, against the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN).
He said Shafie, who is Warisan president, should expect more challenges to be thrown his way following the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) recent move to probe alleged corruption linked to his tenure as rural and regional development minister from 2009 to 2015.
“Datuk Seri Shafie, who was a senior federal leader, should know better,” he said. “Now that Shafie has joined the struggle for Sabah rights, he should expect that more challenges will be thrown his way, like what SAPP has been facing for the last ten years.”
“We welcome Datuk Shafie and others who have joined the Sabahan fight for Sabah rights,” he added.
“But they should wake up to the fact that the righteous struggle of Sabahans is not going to be easy like a ‘walk in the park’.
“It is for this reason that an alliance of Sabah parties called Gabungan Sabah was formed to fight Umno/BN and other Malaya parties,” said Yong, who was chief minister from 1996 to 1998 under BN, in a statement today.
Yesterday, Shafie, who quit Umno in July last year and then established Warisan, questioned why there had been no investigation carried out prior to him leaving his ministerial post. He characterised attempts to link him to the graft allegations as a political attack on him.
“When I was in the government, the performance was good. Now that I am out of the government, I did something wrong. Over the years, why was there no wrong?” he was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.
Yong said the struggle for Sabah rights had never been easy.
He said Gabungan Sabah chairman Mohd Noor Mansur and Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (STAR) president Jeffery Kitingan were among the opposition members who spent years in detention without trial under the now repealed Internal Security Act.
“In recent years, Sabahan activists were locked up. Some were charged for sedition,” Yong added.